Worrying behaviour

PUBLISHED: 16:15 20 August 2008 | UPDATED: 07:04 30 May 2010

THE letter you published last week Homeless Men Screamed at Dog painted a very worrying picture of behaviour in public. I sympathise with Jordan McLachlan who was on the receiving end of the abuse; it must have been very upsetting. The police were, tho

THE letter you published last week 'Homeless Men Screamed at Dog' painted a very worrying picture of behaviour in public.

I sympathise with Jordan McLachlan who was on the receiving end of the abuse; it must have been very upsetting. The police were, though, able to respond well and deal with the complaint.

On a wider issue, I notice that these two men are in danger of being seen as malicious because they are rude to people and because they choose to have a different lifestyle.

My concern is that because they choose to live differently they are seen as bad. The two things do not follow each other logically and are not synonymous. If people were critical of them for behaving differently because, say, they observed religious customs this would be seen as discrimination.

Their behaviour in being rude and unhygienic are the things we need to be concerned about, not their being different in their choice of how they accommodate themselves.

So when people show there can be an alternative to the world run by those ideas and beliefs they are vilified in a manner for which there is no logical basis, simply an emotional one.

So let us separate out fact from fantasy with these two people and not use their differences as a means of scapegoating them.